Tag: easter

Aubade has been so into princesses lately that I decided to make a couple little dresses for some of her tiny dolls, to match the princess costumes one of her aunts and uncles gave her for Christmas. I guess one silver lining of the quarantine is that I have a little extra time at home for little crafty projects like this! (Also, her pink nails are Crayola marker… she’s been coloring them to match her outfits!)

For Limerick, I wrote a few quick Python scripts to let him see some of his favorite number sequences up to whatever parameter he wants – Fibonacci numbers, triangle numbers, square numbers, powers of any base, and reciprocals of integers. He loves being able to see those numbers in more detail (and more quickly!) than he could with a calculator. So far I haven’t gotten him interested in trying to write his own code, although since this is his first time using a computer he does have the whole learning curve of the keyboard and trackpad to deal with first!

With Rondel I’ve just been reading and reading and reading. We started The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe towards the end of Lent and have now finished it, as well as Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Silver Chair. He absolutely loves worlds of fantastical beasts, bold adventures, kings and queens, and magic.

One of the hardest things about the quarantine is making sure we all get enough physical activity. The other day we set off on what I thought would be a short exploration through the neighborhood and ended up being a 3.2 mile trek (Aubade in the stroller, Limerick on his bike, Rondel walking)… but now the temperatures are hitting 100 every day and those long walks are a lot less enjoyable. Also I’ve been sick for the past week and really didn’t have energy to do anything active with the kids. My parents’ pool has been such a blessing, as their house is the one place we are still taking the kids, but for the first time I’m wishing we had our own! I’m sure when things are back to normal this desire will fade, though.

My other personal challenge is maintaining a sense of rhythm and structure when all the milestones and pivot points of a regular week are gone. I think especially as an autistic person, I struggle significantly with having an uncertain routine. So far I’ve been doing alright with bookending the day – prayer in the morning, reading to the kids while they eat breakfast, and exercising on the stationary bike in the evening while listening to podcasts – but the middle of the day is a great gaping void. And when I think the day is going to have a certain structure but then it doesn’t end up working out, it’s really bad. I suppose if I had to find a silver lining here, it would be both the confirmation that I am autistic and didn’t somehow trick the psychologist as well as the reassurance of God’s faithfulness and grace as I find myself needing Him more.

Related to that last point, the Easter season has been such a gift right now. The daily reminder that Christ is risen, the reaffirmation of the hope and joy to be found in Him, even just the singing of the alleluias – those things help me stave off negative emotions and unhelpful thought patterns. They give me a starting point for seeing joy in each day, for learning to be thankful, and for abiding in hope.

Finally, the sudden burst of warmth has made the garden flourish! The last of the winter beets are rounding out under their thin blanket of soil and the herbs are thick and bushy. The blackberries are ripe, the peaches are blushing, the corn is shooting up, and the beans are filling in around the trellis. I even have some sweet potato and purple basil sprouting up on their own from last summer! This is definitely a joy-bringing aspect of this time as well.

I hope you are all doing well, staying healthy and finding joy, and that you have the support you need right now! I am linking up with Kelly today so head over to check out the rest of the link up!

Christmas is a relatively easy holiday to explain to small children, because it involves the birth of a baby, and little kids immediately relate to that and get excited about that. Easter, with its requisite understanding of death, is a bit harder. I didn’t try to heavy-handedly force the story down my kids’ throats this year; I just introduced the people and the events, and began to populate Holy Week with church and family traditions that will hopefully give them a sense of the importance of the holiday even when they can’t really understand it yet.

So on Good Friday we made our hot cross buns, read together, and went to the service that evening. On Saturday we made Easter cookies (much easier to handle with two little boys than Easter egg coloring, and tastier in the end since none of us really care for hard boiled eggs) and had a low-key meal with my parents; I don’t know if it carried over for the kids, but for me the day was filled with a sense of hushed anticipation that I really hadn’t felt on this Saturday in the past. And on Easter I tried to fill every part of the day with a specialness, an excitement, a celebration! We went to church in the morning of course, after letting the boys enjoy some Easter treats at home, and then drove up to my in laws’ house to celebrate with the extended family.

{pretty} and {happy}

My FIL set up an Easter egg hunt for all the little cousins in their backyard, and it was quite a success 🙂 Honestly, I think my boys would have been excited to find just one egg and discover it to be full of chocolate or goldfish crackers – finding 4 or 5 each was extraordinary happiness. They didn’t quite have the knack for spotting and collecting the eggs that their cousins did, but they took such delight in each egg that they didn’t even notice, much less care, that they’d found fewer eggs overall. It made me wonder how many times I’ve lost my enjoyment in something completely gratuitous and fun, like these eggs, just because someone else did “better” than me… I hope that in future I can have the same innocent joy in the experience that my boys showed me here.

{happy}

This has to be one of the best simple “grandma’s house” kind of toys out there:

Both boys climbed on it over and over again. Rondel figured out how to go up one side and down the other; Limerick managed to get up to the top but then would come back down the same way he went up. He ended up finding out he could slide down in between two of the rungs, which was apparently fun, but then he would be stuck and cry for someone to pull him back up and out of the ladder. And then he would climb back and do it all again…

{funny}

This is Limerick’s suspicious look (with a mouth full of crackers) as he eyes my in-laws’ dog, who had been sneaking goldfish whenever Limerick looked away. I don’t think he really grasped what was happening, but he knew something was up… we eventually persuaded him to move his eggs off the ground so the dog wouldn’t be able to steal it so easily.

{real}

I didn’t really get a picture of this, but the reality of the day was that the boys didn’t get good naps, and were worn out by the excitement and lack of routine. Something I’ve learned in the past couple years, with Rondel, is that all the best plans and fun activities are pointless if I don’t factor in enough time to let my kids acclimate to the changes of the holiday and process all the different stimuli coming at them. With this in mind, we had planned to arrive at my in-laws house early so that the boys could nap there before the rest of the family arrived, and be comfortable in the environment before it was filled with people – but when we got there, we discovered that they had changed the locks and forgotten to give us a copy of the new key. Not the best thing to find with two tired boys who were very much looking forward to going inside their grandparents’ house…

I think it was by God’s grace that I was able to stay calm and help the boys (Rondel especially) adjust and relax, and it wasn’t too long before they were able to enjoy the time and the family despite their tiredness and the challenges of the day. Knowing my own propensity towards anxiety and worst-case-scenario thinking, I really am thankful that we were able to have a great time celebrating the Resurrection together as a family and overcome the logistical issues along the way.

(I found this at the park this morning – it was like a reminder from God, on this day of waiting and held breath between the crucifixion and resurrection, of both the pain and the beauty bound together in Christ’s sacrifice.)